RMI/MIWA and the portatour^® route planner

About RMI/MIWA

MIWA is the Motor Industry Workshop Association of South Africa, the largest trade association falling under the Retail Motor Industry Organisation. It represents the collective voice for the aftermarket independent workshops, directly representing over 2,500 businesses nationally.

MIWA strives to keep its members abreast of new developments in the ever-changing repair industry. It ensures that vehicles are repaired to acceptable standards in order to last longer, perform better and maintain safety on South African Roads.

The RMI and MIWA mainly rely on membership fees, so the retention and recruitment of members is crucial. The association’s field reps play an essential part in growing the membership base to ensure long term growth and sustainability.

Why automatic route planning?

Before portatour^®, the field reps were faced with a series of challenges when organising their daily sales activities. In South Africa, the reps have vast territories to cover from dense urban areas to rural areas, all requiring a lot of travel time.

Keeping an accurate overview of all businesses scattered across the territories was challenging. Planning efficient routes was a very tedious job and it was also a time-consuming manual process to identify topics relevant to each customer. In total, they could spend three hours or more each week planning routes. As a result, they drove excessively long routes with lots of windshield time and still did not manage to see all their customers according to the agreed frequency. It was time to go digital.

We would sit on a Friday and basically plan the next week, to decide which customers we were going to see. To plan it properly, you also needed to go back to the call reports and read through them all.

Peter von Mosseveld, Associational Rep Eastern Region

Implementing portatour^®: Seamless launch and works like a charm

Pieter Niemand and his team evaluated different providers. portatour^® perfectly combined route optimisation and CRM functionalities.

The transition from paper to digital was seamless. Within three meetings of two hours each, all data was uploaded to portatour^®, the reps got trained and were up and running right away.

Over the course of the first weeks, the configuration was fine-tuned and customised to ensure the reps had all the necessary information about their members handily available on their smartphones.

portatour^® is very easy to work with. I think anybody who is not even tech-inclined can use the tool.

Madoda Sonwabo, Associational Rep Johannesburg

The portatour^® after-sales and support service is excellent. Even though portatour® is a SaaS-solution, we shaped and customised the tool to fit our specific use-case. And it worked for us like a charm.

Pieter Niemand, MIWA National Director

Route planning now: Clear overview and easy planning with portatour^®

Today, instead of carrying around spreadsheets, the reps have their daily routes mapped out on their cell phones. It is also a much safer and practical solution. portatour^® was a real game changer in their daily work life. Instead of three hours, it now takes the push of a button to schedule the route for the coming week, taking into account individual call intervals for each and every customer.

Instead of spending hours gathering the call reports from the last visits, the reps have all this information seamlessly on their phones.

You have all you need to know on your phone now, no need to slip into the office and get everything planned and printed out anymore. We now have a lot more time on our hands for retaining and recruiting members.

Brione Schoeman, Associational Rep Western Region

Arriving prepared leaves a very professional impression on customers. They feel appreciated and listened to. This intangible value is so important - a good image defined by trust and a high-quality service. The customer needs to experience the benefits of being a member to RMI, and with portatour^®, we can deliver excellent service.

Pieter Niemand, MIWA National Director

Benefits of portatour®: More visits, less mileage and a tremendous help to daily business

Apart from creating more time, portatour^® also had an impact on the business itself. After crunching the numbers, here are the results: It is possible to do between one and three extra visits per day, depending on the territory. This means that in total, the six reps achieve about 2,500 additional visits throughout a year.

The optimised routes focus on customers due for a visit while minimising driving times. Between 15% and 18% fewer miles are driven over the year, representing a hugely positive impact. This obviously results in attractive cost savings, while, at the same time enabling the reps to visit more customers per day, all while adhering to all their customers’ individualised call intervals.

portatour^® clusters the customers intelligently onto an optimised route. That way, more visits are possible because it gives you all the directions and details in real time. No more googling and typing in addresses anymore. That made life quite easy on the road for us and saves us about 15 minutes between each and every visit.

Prinola Govender, Associational Rep KZN Region

An additional challenge in South Africa is the frequent power cuts. Before portatour^®, the reps were often interrupted in their work and had to wait for their head-office servers to go online again before continuing working.

However, now with portatour^®, any time is tea time, name it, I’ve got the information in my hand, on my phone. This also helps us a lot, because we are still able to provide services to any members who are looking for a referral, for workshops, etc.

Marcia Modiba, Associational Rep Northern Region

portatour^® was also key for MIWA during the challenging times when Covid-19 broke out. The pandemic had a huge impact on business activities at RMI.

We have adapted very well to the challenging Covid-19 situation. portatour^® as our route planner and CRM system, has been, and still is, assisting us in a great way to be relevant and supportive to our member base. portatour^® is our online 24/7 Personal Assistant in the field.

Pieter Niemand, MIWA National Director